SheridanTris wrote:
About 5/6 years ago I said I thought Triathlon was going to become a sport for the rich/privileged and wasn’t going to attract the next generation of new comers. I got shot out of the water BIG TIME. AUS Tri have lost 11% of their membership in the past 12 months and 50% over the last 5 years. GB Tri no longer declares their membership numbers so I would imagine a similar pattern. A lot of races that were sold out as soon as entries opened now have places available up to deadline.
The sport is in decline at all levels. Some tri mags have an article once a year on entry level equipment or have a focus on new members in the off season but generally 99% is aimed at the high end. It goes beyond the magazines.
How many times have group rides done their best to drop the newbie to put him in his place? As long as that mentality exists the sport will continue to decline.
I used to organize a group ride where we gave out points and the biggest climbs where in the first half of the ride. The first few climbs we had penalty points for first to the top and bonus points for last to the top. It kept the group ride together for the entire first half. The second half and sprints with regroup points but as the second half was net downhill, it allowed for the FOP people to get some good intervals in, while the longer net downhills allowed for the less strong riders to catch up and stay "attached" during the downhill regroups !!!
But I don't think the phenonon of dropping new riders is anything new. This was there in 1985 when I did my first group rides with the local roadie group (fortunately I had a big enough engine from runnning....did the 1.5 miles in military at 7:08 so 4:40ish miler pace, so kind of hard to drop me on hills due to engine)....it was like that during 90's, 2000s, 2010s and today. Unlike running or swimming where strong athletes are comfortable in their skin because a new rider can't just show up and keep up with top people, that is not the case for biking....riders like Lance, Ritchie Porte, Cam Wurf etc etc etc can come out of other sports, do a few pedal rev's and be up near the top cyclists....so there is an inherent insecurity that fast cyclists have because a good athletes with a solid engine from another sport can quickly become fast at cycling.
Locally, one of my buddies took our Israel premier tech cyclist Michael Woods out when he was an injured 3:50ish miler. Mike climbed the local climb in running shoes and rat traps faster than anyone we knew about, but off his run training and youth hockey.
If you are a big engine newbie you survive the baptism from the local studs and generally put them in their place shortly (I am sure Lucy Charles would have done that too). But if you're an average engine person, that "baptism" culture that exists on the bike pretty well everywhere, can be a tough one to overcome....but that's not a 2022 sport decline problem